


Great Expectations

by uponavenueroad



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drugs, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, Hogwarts Seventh Year, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Period-Typical Homophobia, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uponavenueroad/pseuds/uponavenueroad
Summary: "Sirius closes his eyes, overcome and humbled by an acute rush of desire. The association of watching Remus and wanting something more evokes the memory of Remus’s body after the full moon, shipwrecked on the mangled four-poster bed hidden in the depths of the Shrieking Shack. Artfully draped and marred in bruises like some kind of battered mythical hero, Remus’s naked body was the twin image of a muggle painting that Sirius had encountered on a trip to the Tate museum in London at the tail end of the summer before their seventh year."———With barely three weeks left before his final departure from Hogwarts, Sirius is confused about a lot of things — namely, the status of his friendship with Remus. If this results in brusque attempts to persuade Remus to move into his London flat or tactlessly explore the question of Remus’s sexuality, then so be it.Or the one where Sirius is oblivious about his feelings until he isn’t.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 15
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

From his current vantage point in the pub, lodged within an assemblage of wooden tables bustling with students, Sirius observes the graceful slope of Remus's shoulders and the easy, focused smile of Remus's date. Sirius can't remember the girl’s name – Fay? Fiona? He’s confident that her name begins with the letter _F_. He knows with a modicum of certainty that she’s from Ravenclaw, and that if he isn't more careful in timing his glances from his position within Three Broomsticks, she'll clue in and swiftly inform Remus about the peeper in the back.

“You're a shit date,” Marlene McKinnon huffs, wiping a trickle of frothy butterbeer from the corner of her mouth. She awkwardly swivels in her chair, tracking Sirius's gaze and bypassing the activity of the room to focus on Remus's table. “You haven't said a bloody word in the last five minutes, Black. Not sure what you're trying to divine from Lupin's back, but it might be easier to actually go chat with the bloke.”

“He's on a date,” Sirius responds distractedly, brow furrowing as Longbottom's large bulk momentarily conceals Remus's table.

“Right, well that clears everything up,” Marlene laughs, shaking her head.

Sirius is somewhat cheered by her obvious mirth, fully aware that he's been an absolute tit so far. The reality is that he can't quite explain what's got him so wound up about Remus's so-called date. All he knows is that he's felt completely unhinged since the morning, when he’d haphazardly learned about it through James, who’d been lazily teasing Remus about his new “mystery girl.” Remus, for his part, barely rose to the bait, his cheeks faintly red as he’d refused to divulge any details, except for the time and location of the rendezvous.

It took a quarter of bush weed from the Forbidden Forest and an expertly executed mid-morning snog in a fourth-floor broom closet to convince Marlene to accompany him last minute to Hogsmeade. Though she’d been confused by Sirius’s sudden affection, since their friendship mostly consisted of one-off snogs in the Gryffindor common room and an abashed appreciation of progressive rock, she’d readily agreed to join him. Truthfully, Sirius had picked Marlene for his recon mission for two reasons: first, she had conveniently approached him that morning about borrowing his favourite King Crimson record, handily indebting her to Sirius, and secondly, Sirius preferred looping a friend into his madness rather than compromising an innocent bystander.

Though Sirius never would say so out loud, the oft dressing-down from Evans about his “disgusting lothario behaviour,” coupled with the fallout from the Prank, had served to blunt his desire for casual hook-ups. Evans had since commented (with an amused James in the background) that he was evidently “maturing.” Horrified by the comment, Sirius had pointedly enchanted the mirrors in the girls’ lavatory to exaggerate the reflector's facial hair. It hadn't been his best work and even Evans, who’d on many occasions vocally spoken out against the Marauders’ pranks, particularly those with a misogynistic flavour, had given him a pitying smile after descending the stairs of the seventh-year girls’ lavatory with a fetching auburn moustache.

“Why're you buzzing about Lupin's date anyways?” Marlene tries again, her patience for Sirius's baffling behaviour obviously waning. “I admit I'm a bit surprised Frances decided to go out with him, though I suppose she's always preferred the bookish types.”

Marlene's off-hand evaluation of Remus’s worth refocuses Sirius's attention, and he knows he's being borderline rude, when he bites out, “What are you nattering about? Why wouldn't what’s-her-name want him?”

“Oooh, tetchy, aren't we!” With an eyebrow raised, Marlene leans forward and says smoothly, lowering her voice, “Before you get your knickers in a twist, I'm not blind – Remus is dead sexy in a David Bowie sort of way. He's a bit feminine, yeah? Or maybe, it's more accurate to say, he's almost – delicate.”

Sirius hurriedly surveys the tavern, hyper aware all of a sudden of the pitch and range of Marlene's scratchy voice, even as she attempts to quiet her words. Remus's back, pin straight, reveals nothing.

Hands pressed against the sticky edge of the table, Sirius struggles to clear his throat, scrambling for something to say.

“You're absolutely mad,” he finally answers, pausing to add, “Remus isn't delicate.”

It's not a lie – Remus's lycanthropy is a superhuman feat, a physical ferocity hacked from his body under the full moon – so why does it feel like one? The heart of Remus's strength, his inexorable kindness and patience and fortitude against adversity, which Sirius knows intimately, can't be detected outwardly. Yet when Sirius recalls his friend's likeness, he's confronted with the image of half-lidded, gold-flecked eyes struggling to stay open after a night of glowing wreckage, and pale, almost translucent skin limned with fresh lacerations. Marlene's measurement of who Remus is resonates with Sirius in spite of Remus's strength. There is something undeniably, uncomfortably delicate about Remus.

Sirius lamely tacks on, after a moment of heavy silence, “What’s your point?”

“I thought it'd be obvious enough, but that's boys I guess,” Marlene sniffs, shifting in her seat. “I'd assumed Remus was queer. But I was wrong, clearly.” She gestures with a tilt of her head towards the couple seated across the tavern.

“Fuck,” Sirius startles, painfully knocking his knee against the thick table leg. Grabbing his throbbing knee, desperately trying to modulate his voice, he hisses, “You’re full of it. Remus's no shirt-lifter.”

Marlene struggles to master a rather raucous cackle, concealing a smile behind a fringed sleeve. “I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you, I swear. It's just – how do you really know? Have you ever asked him?”

“No, but then again I've never asked you, have I?”

“Well, maybe you should.”

“What's that mean, you like girls then?”

Marlene takes a generous sip of her draught, clearly enjoying the theatrics of delaying her answer. Sometimes he thinks that with her penchant for drama, she’d have been better suited as a Slytherin.

“One girl, I think.”

“Oh. Who?”

“I'm not going to out someone without their say. God, you're thick sometimes.” She frowns slightly, her bravado dampening somewhat.

“Bit of a pot calling the kettle black situation we got here. Not going to take the bait, then? I'm talking about Remus, you ninny.”

She huffs faintly before answering, “I'm not daft. And it's different. I just speculated about him. I don't actually know if he is or isn't, and I'm not spreading it around, if that's your concern.”

“It wasn't, but now that you mention it – you better keep your trap shut about this.” A knot of guilt tugs at Sirius, knowing how gossip works to unsettle Remus, how he disdains the lack of control he can exact over the truth, fearing the conclusions people might draw about him.

“Charming, as ever.” Marlene sighs and then hesitates before throwing out, “You're looking a bit peaky. Maybe we should head back to the castle.”

“I'm fine.” But that's not quite true. Sirius’s world has been newly composed, rearranged into a form with no equivalent. The map for navigating this new terrain eludes him.

With feverish skin, hot against the cotton of his vest, Sirius takes one last gulp of butter beer before gracelessly standing, loudly scraping his chair against the floor.

“Yeah, we should go. I want to get out of here.”

“All right, all right,” Marlene says, not unkindly. “Are you going to talk to Remus?”

“About what?”

Her shrewd, exacting smile reminds him of Evans – like Sirius's ineptitude physically pains her, and she's just dying to spell it out for him. Too smart for her own good, James used to say about Evans, after another rebuff of his attentions, as if her mental agility wasn't the main attraction. 

“Never mind,” Marlene sighs. “Let's go.”

As they navigate the compact pub, heading towards the exit, Sirius purposely edges closer to Remus's table. Marlene is already pushing open the front door, releasing a flood of airy, spring-infused light into the humid cloaked room, when Sirius brushes his hand against Remus's shoulder. He feels a sudden jolt of muscle beneath his touch, but doesn't linger knowing Remus must be utterly perplexed by his behaviour. Desperately, in a last-ditch attempt to minimize the damage, to soften his obvious brush-off, Sirius swings around at the threshold, throwing Remus a winning smile. He hopes it comes across as a friendly gesture, an act of camaraderie, and not the expression of a mad man. He skulks off, eyes affixed on the cobbled road ahead, not waiting to see if Remus has smiled in return.

\---

The newspaper crinkles in Sirius’s hands as he maneuvers the paper folds of the rental section closer to his face in a renewed attempt to focus on the words in front of him. Sirius has been re-reading the same sentence for the last five minutes, too embarrassed to ask Remus to clarify once again how flats are priced in muggle London.

Sections of the Daily Prophet and London Times are spread haphazardly across the sofa that Sirius shares with Remus. Wedged in the corner of the sofa, Remus uses a heavy potions textbook as a smooth surface to make unintelligible scratches with his quill on the employment section of the Daily Prophet, which he scans with alarming focus.

While united in their task, they’ve hardly shared a word in the last hour, and the silence has begun to weigh on Sirius. He’s never been comfortable with dead air, the solemnity of a quiet room, and as the evening takes hold, he begins to wonder if Remus is purposefully ignoring him.

The common room is remarkably barren for a Friday evening; apart from Peter, who reclines contentedly on an overstuffed armchair, absorbed in a muggle comic, and a trio of first years playing a subdued round of exploding snap, Sirius and Remus are the only occupants. With exams having completed and summer hols around the corner, and graduation looming for the seventh-years, most of the students have taken to the outdoors, lounging by the lake.

Sirius feels a pang of loss, frustratingly attuned to James’s absence. The traitor has no doubt found a sweetly shaded tree to share with Evans. The pair has quickly established themselves as the most disgustingly in love couple on castle grounds, despite Evan’s contempt for James only having fully dissipated a couple months ago. Their penchant for public displays of affection is a loathsome sight to behold. Sirius failingly tries to convince himself that he’s pleased to be spared the sight this evening, but the truth is that he longs for the old days, when Friday nights were dedicated to exploring unchartered, hidden passageways and wreaking havoc on unsuspecting Slytherins. It’s pathetic, really, that he’s spending his last breath as a student cooped up inside, planning for his future like a respectable adult.

“This is exceedingly glum,” Sirius says at last, gazing pleadingly at Remus.

“Shall we put on a new record?” Remus looks up from his lap, hands tightly clutching the Daily Prophet as if it contains all the answers. “I think Lily’s left Talking Heads out by the turntable.”

“Not even Jim Morrison could liven this party.”

“I didn’t know we were having a party. And Morrison’s dead.”

“At least he had a bloody good time while he was alive. We should be celebrating, not planning our future as if it’s a battle to be won.”

Remus frowns and glances in Peter’s direction; though Peter appears unfazed, it’s unclear whether he can even hear their discussion from across the common room.

“Listen, I’ve got to finish checking the job listings in the Prophet. But ask Pete to join you on your, er – celebratory excursion. He seems rather unhindered at the moment.”

“Maybe I will ask him, leave you to rot on this mouldy sofa, wasting your glorious youth.”

“Christ you’re dramatic,” Remus mumbles, re-focusing his gaze on the Prophet.

“Besides,” Sirius drawls, slowly edging closer to Remus for the purpose of peeking at the supposedly wondrous list of job postings. “This all seems a bit useless. I don’t see why you won’t just apply to the MLE with me and Prongs? The Auror Headquarters is desperate for new recruits.”

“Hmm, maybe,” Remus hums distractedly, still attending to the classifieds.

Sirius considers pushing the subject, willfully barreling forward on well-trodden territory. This is not an original dispute for them, though it invariably concludes in Remus’s denunciation of the ministry’s werewolf registry, a mandatory regulation enforced upon all adult lycanthropes. Or the “Nail in the coffin when it comes to my career,” as Remus regularly describes it. Since the passing of his seventeenth birthday last March, Remus has been formally acknowledged as a werewolf in the ministry’s public records; at this point, it’s sheer dumb luck that Remus has not been outed at Hogwarts.

“I know you think it’s a long shot, with the registry now in effect, but a note from Dumbledore would probably do the trick.”

This angle of persuasion is also recognizable; the headmaster has been invoked many times before by both Sirius and James as a save-all, and unfailingly, Remus has always dismissed it as an option. Sirius knows intimately the inflated sense of debt Remus bears towards Dumbledore, and his intention going forward to absolve rather than incur further debts from the headmaster.

Sirius nearly spits out an apology after a heavy silence, suddenly regretting having brought up the subject at all, when Remus shifts closer and angles his paper towards Sirius.

“Look, here’s a promising job. They’re looking for a dashing tutor to instruct a group of Veela exchange students.”

“Let me see that,” Sirius laughs, reaching for the paper, pleased that Remus is smiling despite his obvious deflection. “Oi, you dirty blagger, they’re looking for someone to stamp out a grindylow outbreak in Derbyshire. Much less appealing.”

“I don’t know, not everyone has the same taste as you. Someone out there might find a grindylow charming, if not a tad slimy.”

Sirius knows it’s a joke, that Remus expects a glib comment in return, but he’s distracted suddenly, zeroing in on the memory of his conversation with Marlene. The question of Remus’s preferences remains unclear, despite Sirius’ best efforts over the last week to decode Remus’s behaviour. Remus, unsurprisingly, has yet to yield any pertinent information, acting more or less like he always has, if a bit more withdrawn as graduation day approaches.

Sirius is half aware of the barbarity of his private crusade, of the invasiveness of his desire to know Remus’s intimate thoughts. In truth, he could give a damn about whether Remus wants to shag a bloke. What’s got Sirius’s stomach in knots is the familiar fear that Remus has not quite resolved his distrust of him since Sirius’s great fuckup in sixth year. If he can only disconceal the rotting core of their dynamic, and undermine Remus’s skewed assumptions about him being untrustworthy, Sirius thinks that there may be a way forward for the two of them, outside the walls of Hogwarts.

“What’s the matter?” Remus asks, carefully nudging Sirius’s shoulder. “Too focused on finding a flat to humour me?”

“Nah, just trying to picture Walburga’s face when introducing the family to my sexy, water-demon bride.”

Remus snorts. “Absolutely thrilled, of course.”

“Of course. She’d probably want to re-instate me as the heir of the House Black.”

“Imagine if you were to bring home a proper dark creature, like a banshee – or werewolf for that matter.”

Sirius shifts towards Remus, adjusting his body so that he’s got an unfettered view of Remus’s profile – the tense curl of his shoulders, the uneven edges of his homespun hair-cut messily coiling around his ears, and the fine slope of his nose.

Sirius prepares an answer, but it sounds indignant and maybe a bit vulnerable in his head, so he waits a beat and tries to come up with something else to say.

Remus repositions himself on the sofa to more directly face Sirius, finally releasing his grip on the Daily Prophet to fold his hands tightly in his lap. The raised web of scars covering his knuckles stretches under the pressure of his clasped hands. “It was a joke, you know. Nothing more.”

“It wasn’t funny. You shouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

Sirius winces, knowing at once that he’s been caught out. This isn’t like him; among his peers he’s known for his generous laughter, ever eager to indulge in a joke, especially when it’s at the expense of others. Nothing is taboo when it comes to humour, not even his inglorious heritage — not even his friends. Remus knows this about him, ever familiar with Sirius’s brutal desire to push and poke at other peoples’ boundaries, and so he awaits the inevitable line of inquiry.

But Remus indulges him this time; he emits a soft, almost surprised laugh before rerouting the conversation. “I’m sorry, you’re right. In any case, have you found some leads in the apartment hunt?”

“Here’s one I have my eye on. Two bedrooms in Shoreditch, near the tube. I suppose that’s a good thing, according to muggles, right?”

Sirius presses the paper into Remus’s lap, gently tapping the listing with his forefinger. He is alarmingly aware of the proximity of their thighs on the sofa, and is surprised by an unbidden urge to carelessly swing his arm around Remus’s wiry shoulders, to gently pull Remus closer.

Sirius expects this action wouldn’t be well received. Invading Remus’s personal space is a foolish idea, inviting Remus’s mockery – or worse, his suspicion and hurt.

Without overestimating his self-importance, Sirius readily believes that the Prank utterly cocked up Remus’s confidence in the supposed inviolability of the Marauders. Though Sirius has never voiced his concern out loud, somewhat afraid of having it confirmed by James, he’s become familiar with a new Remus who balks at affection – glowering uncertainly at a gifted chocolate frog or flinching away from an encouraging backslap. What hurts the most is the startled surprise Remus now emits when awakening in the basement of the shrieking shack the morning after a transformation, as if Sirius’s presence is not something that can be relied on after countless moons spent together.

“Here it says in the listing that it has a rooftop terrace. Very posh. But why do you need two bedrooms? I thought Prongs was shacking up with Lily. Last I heard they had their eyes on a cottage in Godric’s Hollow, close to the Potter homestead.”

“The room’s not for James.”

“We’ve been over this before, Sirius,” Remus drawls, lifting his gaze from the listing, “quidditch paraphernalia doesn’t require a room of its own.”

“You know why I want two rooms, wanker. The second one’s for you.”

Sirius pauses before discreetly glancing at Remus, already anticipating Remus’s response. Despite the worrisome silence on Remus’s part, Sirius is secretly relieved that he’s managed to broach the subject of living arrangements.

“I’m sure I’d remember such a conversation,” Remus says at last.

Sirius frowns. He has a clear memory of the discussion – it had taken place nearly a month ago, at breakfast, right before they’d sat their NEWTS in potions. It’d been a full moon only two nights before, and Remus had been on edge from exhaustion, exacerbated by his general antipathy towards potions. It was a short exchange, Sirius can admit, but he’s positive that his intentions had been made clear when James had asked if he planned to live at his newly inherited estate in York, an unexpected bequest from his late Uncle Alphard.

_“What do you say, Padfoot? Going to open Britain’s first playboy mansion?”_

_“Not a chance. Moony’s never lived in the big city before. We’ll have to let an apartment in London.”_

Sirius vaguely remembers Remus’s cautious smile, and how pleased he’d been to be the reason for it.

“Why do _you_ want to live with me?” Remus inquires after a beat of silence.

“Because you’re my friend,” Sirius responds unthinkingly.

“Or because in two weeks I’m going to be destitute,” Remus counters, while putting aside the now crumpled paper. He pulls his feet onto the couch and protectively draws his knees closer to his chest; crouching inwards, he rests the point of his chin on the open patch of skin poking through his frayed trousers.

“Merlin, and you call me dramatic! It’s not that complicated – all you have to do is say yes.”

Remus raises his gaze in consideration. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. Don’t sit there all bloody high-minded, pretending that you’ve got it all sorted out for me.”

“For fuck’s sake, Moony!” Sirius hisses thinly, indiscreetly alerting Peter to their row; he waves his hand in a flippant gesture, in an effort to discourage Peter from intervening. No one would benefit from Peter’s tepid attempts to diffuse conflict – he’d offer some boilerplate platitude, like, “Cheer up, Lads. Skies clear for the game tomorrow.”

“Keep your voice down, Christ,” Remus snaps, while sharing an appeasing smile in Peter’s direction. “This is why we can’t have this conversation. You always go off.”

“If I seem a bit worked up, it’s because you have a sickening desire to overcomplicate things,” Sirius growls, and then shuffles an inch closer before delicately adding, voice pitched an octave higher, “Shall I spell it out for ickle Rem-y-kins? Might that be helpful? Talk real slow and easy.”

“Now you’re just being an arse.” Remus abruptly casts the paper onto the floor before rising from the couch, his cheeks flushed and fists tightly clenched, as if in preparation for a fight.

Against his better judgement, Sirius reaches out, desperate suddenly to keep Remus for another moment, to resolve the muddle they’ve created and prove that he can do more than muck up a conversation.

With his hand lightly clasped around Remus’s wrist, Sirius says, “Stop – please.”

Remus hesitates, and then nods once as if to say, ‘Go on then’.

“I have money. You know that.” Sirius swallows, ignoring Remus’s scoff before continuing. “And I know you don’t have a job lined up, or as that Ducking bloke says – or is it Dickens? That phallic muggle writer you are so mad about. You don’t have any prospects, right? Or that’s how you put it once. Well I think that’s absolute rubbish. You are brilliant – better than the lot of us by far. But until the rest of the world catches up, I’m here for you. We all are, Prongs and even Pete when he’s not being an absolute tosser.”

“I know this,” Remus rejoins, not quite meeting his eye.

“Do you, though?” Sirius feels frenzied and overheated, and confused all of a sudden about the substance of his question, as if he’s lost track of the thesis, and all subsequent words have become incidental and erratic but no less important. This moment feels devastatingly important, is the thing.

Remus looks at him sharply, his mouth parted. He steps further away from the sofa, gently removing Sirius’s loose clasp on his wrist, and nods at the stairs leading to the boy’s dormitory.

“I’m tired, I’m going to tuck in. But I’ll think about it,” Remus placates, pausing for a moment before quietly tacking on, “I promise.”

“It’s okay, I’ll still be here. Take your time,” Sirius responds hoarsely, smiling crookedly. Overkill, he thinks, in James’s voice, and rises from the sofa to watch Remus walk away. Focused on Remus’s bony ankles, a wedge of white just visible beneath his too-short trousers and worn loafers, Sirius is overcome by a memory of sixth year; or not quite a memory, more of an inhabiting feeling of loss that would accompany most of his interactions with Remus. He’d hated it back then, the feeling of being a step behind someone, unable to catch up.

It’s unsettling, reminds him of a familiar dream in which an enchanted letter is emitting a shrill toneless cry, and despite his best efforts, it remains out of reach and impenetrable. Sirius could never fully unlatch the letter’s seal in the dream, all attempts fruitlessly re-cycling in a smoky chimeric haze. The dream would always leave him unsatisfied, but worse than that, like he’d missed something essential, an answer to a question, or a resolution of sorts. He’d wondered on occasion upon waking from the dream what the letter would have to say, if he were to ever open it. Was it worth all the effort, that endless wanting?


	2. Chapter 2

Sirius pushes past a crowd of enthusiastically dancing fourth-years in an attempt to reach the arched stairwell leading to his dormitory. It’s a familiar scene — an end-of-year celebratory romp in the common room, with the recognizable Gryffindor cliques grouped together by the hearth, their raucous chatter competing with the music playing from the enchanted stereo. While the party has been in the works for over a week, the room appears hastily decorated, with golden tinsel carelessly snaked across the fireplace mantle and around door frames, and a charmed disco ball hovering beneath the vaulted ceiling radiating garish beams of neon-infused light. A wide selection of drinks and treats purchased from Hogsmeade and nicked from the kitchens are installed on a table in the centre of the room, away from the makeshift dance floor.

A firm tug on Sirius’s right shoulder momentarily derails his focus; before he can snappishly upbraid the source of the touch, he’s pulled back against a warm body, heavy arms tightly winding around his torso.

“Fuck, you’re sweaty.” Sirius pulls away from James. “Is it just me, or is it absolutely boiling in here? Never remember it being so bloody hot in June.”

“Drink this, it’ll cool you right down.” James hands over a half-drunk pint of amber ale, which Sirius can immediately deduce has been unpleasantly warmed by his friend’s muggy grip.

“This is piss-warm. I’m not drinking it.” Sirius pushes the pint back into James’s purchase.

“You’re awfully cheery right now,” James responds curiously. He takes a lengthy swig of the drink before gently adding, “Mate, take a look around. It’ll all be over in a week, no more homework or detentions. You should be well pleased — the door to freedom is upon us, and all that rot.”

“Eloquent as ever.”

“Fuck off, Black. But really, what’s bothering you? Is it Regulus again? Listen, we both know things are far from normal right now and are only bound to get worse — in spite of the sunny picture presented in the Daily Prophet these days. The way things stand right now amongst your lot, you’re better off —”

“Those fucking fascists aren’t my lot. And it has nothing to do with that. It’s nothing, really.” Sirius drags a hand over his face and conjures a smile. “I’m going to coax Moony into joining the party, and then we’ll start another round of that muggle game Lily’s absolutely mad for.”

“All right, I can take a hint. But you know that you can tell me things, right? No matter what happens after we leave this place, I’ve got your back. Tea and sympathy… and firewhisky, of course.” James lets his words inelegantly trail off, seemingly unable to properly identify the state of Sirius’s variable mood, and whether a heart-to-heart would be welcomed or dismissed.

“Relax, mate. I know I can come to you — always.” Sirius clasps James’s forearm, softened by his friend’s clumsy attempt to discuss something approximating feelings.

“Right. That’s good.” James looks at him searchingly, but doesn’t linger long and seemingly satisfied, casts a sullen glance at his pint. “This really is shite ale.”

Sirius laughs and says, “Pour a new one for you and me. I’ll only be a moment.”

James nods, his gaze distractedly roaming the crowd, undoubtedly in pursuit of Evans. Sirius peels away from the press of bodies, refocusing on his goal, the threshold to the dormitory. He easily lopes across the common room, pointedly ignoring the appraising looks cast his way by a small collection of girls carelessly draped across a plush red sofa, their heads bowed together and limbs snugly entwined. For a moment, Sirius considers if this bodily expression of togetherness can carry into adulthood; he thinks it might be easier for girls, submitting to the caress of a friend’s touch, the magnetism of unconditional comfort.

\---

The heavy groan of the door opening announces Sirius’s entry into the dimly-lit, overheated dormitory. The jaunty beat of Mud’s ‘Dynamite’ briefly clashes with the wailing thrum of Patti Smith before Sirius closes the door; more clearly now, he can hear Remus’s selection, the rasp of the charmed turntable as it churns out, “Let the ship slide open and I’ll go inside of it / Where you’re not human, you are not human.”

Remus sits neatly on the floor in the shadow of his bed; the blinds have been haphazardly closed, a burning candle on a wooden side table the only source of light in the room. Remus fumbles with a pack of rolling papers in his lap, but promptly looks up and smiles upon Sirius’s approach.

“Dorcas wants her Patti Smith back. She thinks I’m going to run away with it once we leave for good,” Remus says, as if this explains his absence from the party below or the somber aesthetic of their shared room.

“Were you?”

Remus’s mouth curls mischievously. “Thought I’d have another listen before giving it back to her.”

“And the greenery?” Sirius asks, gesturing to the bag of loose marijuana visible on the floor.

“Want some?”

Sirius doesn’t answer, but slumps to the ground beside Remus, resting his back against the adjacent bed frame.

“Well, we’d better hurry or we’ll miss all of the fun,” Sirius gripes, only partly in jest. “Evan’s been teaching us traditional end-of-term muggle games. In something called ‘Most Likely To…’ the lot of them said I’m the most likely in our year to kick the bucket before thirty. Due to bravery, of course.”

“Not stupidity?”

“Shut it.”

“Bit grim, isn’t it?” Remus asks, frowning.

“She also wants us to play something called ‘Rose and Thorn’.”

“What’s that?”

“Your best and worst moments at Hogwarts.”

“Christ, what could yours possibly be? There’s really too many options to choose from. Among the worst moments, of course.” Remus stifles a laugh, continuing, “Perhaps the time Professor Fantana caught you snooping around the Divination classroom, looking for magic mushrooms, and in punishment tasked you with transcribing her memoirs.”

“I’ll have you know that Fantana and I forged a deep connection over our mutual distaste of pureblood rituals. Apparently, she had a near miss in her late teens — her parents almost married her off to some distant Italian cousin. She nearly was tricked into performing some arcane blood rite.”

“She told you this?”

Sirius huffs and draws his hand to his chest in mock injury. “Do I not seem trustworthy to you?”

Remus shrugs and carefully lifts the bound joint to his lips, securing the fold with a lazy lick, his wet, red tongue dragging along the white edge of the paper.

“Better the devil you know,” Remus says at last, inspecting the joint with a critical eye. “So, what is yours then?”

“Surely you must know.”

“Ah, I suppose that makes sense.”

Sirius looks away, exhausted suddenly by their routine circumnavigation of the Prank. “I wish I could change things.”

Remus shakes his head and guardedly answers, a well-practiced response, “It’s all in the past. Has been, for a while now. You know that.”

Sirius wants to press him, but Remus swiftly interjects, asking, “What’s your rose?”

“The moon. Being together as a pack. I’m going to miss that most of all, I think.”

Remus looks at Sirius curiously. “I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Hah, join the club. My mother and McGonagall chair the board.”

Remus smiles, drawing the joint closer to his lips. Sirius itches to light it for him, sharply aware that they’ve never smoked alone in the dormitory before; he’s desperate to watch Remus perform this final, if minor, act of rebellion.

“And what’s your rose, Moony? Your hot date with what’s her name?” Sirius teases, pulling his gaze away from Remus’s wet mouth.

“You know her name.”

“Flossy? Or was that floozy?”

“No, and it wasn’t a date. I’ve already explained it to you and James. We were celebrating the NEWT results. Frances is the reason I passed magical theory this year. Bloody Ravenclaws.”

“So you’re in love then, is that it?”

“You’re a proper comedian.” Remus scowls, shaking his head. More soberly, he adds in a low voice, “I don’t know if I have an answer, to be honest. How could I possibly pick one moment? I never imagined I’d have this.”

Remus pats his trouser pocket in search of his wand. Sirius hurriedly _accios_ a packet of matches from atop his desk, not wanting to rush the moment, but inexplicably fearful that Remus will cease talking — that the intimate fragments from only a moment ago will be quartered away.

Sirius drags the match along the coarse striking surface, delicately raising the flame to the tip of the joint. Remus leans forward, cupping Sirius’s hand.

“Always more satisfying when lit the muggle way.”

Remus nods in agreement and inhales a rush of smoke.

“S’good.”

“Finish what you were going to say before,” Sirius demands, impatient to hear Remus’s answer. He reaches for the burning joint, and with his free hand, superciliously gestures for Remus to hurry up.

“I’ve told you this before,” Remus reminds Sirius. When no objection is made on Sirius’s part, he carries on despite his obvious trepidation. “Dumbledore’s invitation to Hogwarts was a shock. Coming here wasn’t an inevitably for me — it was a privilege and one that I was prepared to never experience. Even after arriving and meeting you and James, becoming a prefect, it’s all felt so fleeting. Like it could disappear at any moment.”

Sirius chokes on a cloud of smoke, releasing a guttural cough. Pounding his chest, he says in a hoarse voice, “And now it’s over.”

“Yes.” Remus twists his torso, reaching for a glass of water. His t-shirt stretches across his narrow waist, revealing the sharp arc of his spine.

“It seems like you’ve been preparing for this.” Remus trades Sirius the glass of water for the joint, which has nearly extinguished, the burnt end of a charcoal wound.

“What do you mean?” Remus questions as he fiddles with the packet of matches.

Sirius recognizes that this moment requires an infusion of levity, a dumb joke to disperse the mounting solemnity, but as if he’s swallowed a dose of veritaserum, he’s uncharacteristically fastened to the rising truth.

With a calmness he does not feel, Sirius explains, “You’ve been detaching yourself from us, your friends, perhaps in an effort to ready for a future you’ve always imagined. One in which you’re alone.”

Sirius adds after a beat of thorny silence, “You seem more withdrawn lately.”

“Since when?”

“The prank, with Sniv - Snape. You know,” Sirius rushes out. More confidently, he admits, “It feels like there’s a wall between us. Like maybe you’re sick of me or no longer want to be friends.”

“I didn’t know you thought about this kind of stuff.” Remus’s gaze slants upwards, dancing between Sirius and the flickering wick of the candle. In the shifting, burnished light, his eyes faintly glow with Delphian acuity.

“What stuff?”

“Me. Us.”

“Well I do,” Sirius snaps, faintly self-conscious. “I’m not an utter git, despite what Evans says.”

“We spend a great deal of time together, Sirius,” Remus reminds him, almost chidingly, as if he’s conversing with a distracted child. It’s the voice he puts on occasionally when tutoring feckless first-years. “Do you really think that if I didn’t care for you, I’d put myself through such suffering?”

“We don’t spend all of our time together,” Sirius objects, failing to answer the question in lieu of mentally gathering evidence to disprove Remus’s assessment of how they spend their time. But when he takes a moment to truly consider the facts, it’s difficult to overlook the ways his and Remus’s routines have alarmingly conjoined over the last few months, a beginning marked by James’s desertion.

“Here, let me light that — it should give us another puff or two.” Sirius crouches before Remus, raising his hands to hurriedly strike the match, pulling back at the last juncture, before the satisfying hiss of fire envelops the end of the joint. 

Remus sucks in deeply, the pull of air revealing the fine hollow of his cheek.

“Since Lily finally gave James a chance, the three of us — you me and Peter — have continued on. There haven’t been as many pranks as of late, not that I’m complaining, but it’s still been fun,” Remus declares, the slight tremor in his voice betraying his conviction.

Taken aback, Sirius struggles to conjure a response.

“I mean, I know you miss James an awful lot — I do too, if I’m being honest.” Remus rushes to add, “And Peter has been increasingly tied up with Emmeline — that coupling still surprises me. But Peter’s pleased, and she’s quite charming so I’m hopeful that it’ll stick this time. I suppose Pete’s had a spell of bad luck this year with girls. Er, this is all to say that I didn’t realize you were so unhappy—”

“Are you mad?” Sirius loudly interrupts. “I’m not unhappy with you, and I don’t care about Prongs and Evans, or Wormtail.”

At Remus’s disbelieving look, Sirius rejoins, “Okay, well, maybe I care marginally. But that’s not the bloody point of all this.”

“Sirius — I think I’m confused.”

“The point,” Sirius repeats, carrying on despite a sudden pang in his stomach, an unwelcome alarm that perhaps something’s about to go terribly wrong, “is that it’s not enough. It hasn’t felt right for a while now.”

The thing is, Sirius hadn’t planned for the evening to unfold in this manner; when he’d gone upstairs to track down Remus, he’d expected a brief sojourn before getting smashingly drunk. Sirius wonders if James is waiting for him in the common room with a fresh pint in hand or if he should expect James to burst into the dormitory at any moment.

Remus magnanimously touches his socked foot to Sirius’s leg and encourages him to continue with a careful smile.

“You said that we spend all of our time together, and I can see now that there may be some truth to it. But it isn’t enough.” Sirius clears his throat, trying to buy some time. He feels unbearably hot all of a sudden and stricken by a sense of foreboding. He asks, voice quieting ever so slightly, “If it was enough, why would I feel like this?”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I’m losing you. Like I’ve already lost you and that soon, when we’re all gone from this place, any chance of making things right will be over.”

“Is that why you want me to live with you? To keep things the way they are?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” Sirius frowns. “All I know for certain is that living together might fix this feeling that it’s all gone wrong or that it’s not enough anymore.”

Remus sighs, leaning his head against the wooden rails of the bed frame. The smoke from the joint hangs thickly in the air, infusing the conversation with a dusky solemnity.

“You’re ever vague when you’re high. But you must know that even if we don’t live together, we’ll still be friends.”

“I’m not high,” Sirius snaps.

“You’re drunk then,” Remus says, voice rising, as if caught between the edge of laughter and anger. “Tell me then — what’s not enough anymore? Is it something I’ve done?”

The B-side has finished playing, the archness of Patti Smith’s voice no longer the backdrop of their protracted drama.

“Fuck. It’s nothing like that. You haven’t done anything wrong.” Sirius presses two fingers to his temple, trying to quiet the traitorous noise in his head. “I think that I’ve tricked myself into thinking that if you still needed the Marauders, things would go on as before. But the problem is that’s it all changed – I don’t want to go back to how it was before.”

Sirius looks fixedly at Remus. “I want to kiss you, I think.”

Remus swallows. “Is that all?”

“I want to fuck you.”

When Remus fails to react, characteristically cryptic in his expression, Sirius probes, “Would you want that? Marlene thought you might.”

“What’s she got to do with it? Were you talking about me?”

“No! Well, yes. But not like you think. Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

The answer sits plainly between them, but something prevents Sirius from saying it aloud, a cautionary impulse that’s all the more confounding for its unfamiliarity.

“I didn’t know you were,” Remus needles, when it’s clear Sirius won’t provide an answer.

“I know.” Stricken by the suspicious tilt of Remus’s mouth, Sirius struggles to think of some way to explain it — how he thinks he probably likes both girls and boys but that it’s difficult to say for sure when all of his wanting seems to be angled towards one person.

How did this happen so suddenly? Or was it sudden? It feels now like a sluggish poison that’s been circulating just beneath the surface, languidly consuming all areas of his life.

“I didn’t expect this from you. Or maybe that’s not quite true. You want things an awful lot.”

“What does that mean?”

“I guess I’ve always admired or maybe disdained is more accurate, your interest in experience. Your desire to push the limits. Mostly I think it’s a response to boredom but sometimes, if I’m feeling charitable, I’m inclined to think it’s genius.”

Sirius laughs. By this point in their friendship, he’s accustomed to Remus’s tendency to play the arm chair therapist, dismantling his friends’ behaviour only to reconfigure it into tidy patterns of meaning.

“You think I want to fuck you for the experience. Or because I’m an empty sod, seeking meaning in the taboo.”

“I really don’t know what to think.”

Sirius scoots forward on the ground, adjusting his position so that’s he’s seated directly next to Remus. He shifts to look more closely at Remus’s shadowed profile. Carefully, in a move that feels both ordinary and wildly peculiar, Sirius reaches forward to place his hand on Remus’s thigh. A muscle twinges beneath his fingers as he presses closer, absorbing the warmth of Remus’s body, the softness of corduroy trousers.

“I feel like I’ve touched you here before.”

Remus hums in acknowledgement. A flush colours the high curve of his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “You know me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er, apologies for the abrupt end of this chapter! But anticipation is the spice of life! There will be one more instalment to wrap things up. Thanks for reading xx


	3. Chapter 3

Sirius closes his eyes, overcome and humbled by an acute rush of desire. The association of watching Remus and wanting something more evokes the memory of Remus’s body after the full moon, shipwrecked on the mangled four-poster bed hidden in the depths of the Shrieking Shack. Artfully draped and marred in bruises like some kind of battered mythical hero, Remus’s naked body was the twin image of a muggle painting that Sirius had encountered on a trip to the Tate museum in London at the tail end of the summer before their seventh year.

Two days before Sirius had been due back at King’s Cross to commence his final year at Hogwarts, he’d flooed with James from the Potters’ homestead to the Leaky Cauldron. They’d concocted a plan to meet Remus for an “End of summer treat” — the name supplied by James’s mum. Mrs. Potter had begrudgingly accepted the overnight trip to Diagon Alley, booking a room for them with the promise that they wouldn’t stray outside of wizarding London.

Peter’s mum had declined the request on his behalf after a string of highly publicized disappearances among top-level ministry bureaucrats. It could only be guessed that Peter hadn’t put up much of a fight when the plan for the day had been revealed.

An afternoon roaming a muggle museum hadn’t been Sirius’s idea of a good time either, but back then he’d been desperate to oblige Remus’s girly tastes in an effort to regain his favour. While James hadn’t been keen to openly disobey his mother’s instructions, he’d seemingly understood the necessity of such an excursion to the ongoing vitality of the Marauders.

The museum itself had been unremarkable, but Sirius had managed to refrain from sharing his assessment of the utterly lifeless immobile artwork, knowing that Remus would likely decry his views as elitist and wizard-centric. The late Victorian section of the museum had been particularly stodgy and after hours of viewing seemingly endless rows of paintings, Sirius had been itching for an excuse to leave when they’d stumbled upon a painting depicting Icarus’s ruined body, tragically sprawled like a fallen angel. The beauty of it had been startling.

“The painter mucked it up.” Sirius remembers the sibilant exhale of Remus’s voice as he’d carefully approached the painting. It was only the third time that day that Remus had actively directed a comment towards Sirius. Not that he’d been counting. “It’s his wings, you see?”

Remus had extended his hand towards the paining. “They’re unharmed, perfect really. But it’s all wrong… in the myth, the waxen wings melt from the heat of the sun. Icarus should be ruined having fallen so far.”

Sirius fails to recall his response but is unsettled by the thought that he’s imbued memories of the vulnerable, fleeting — and inarguably painful — moments between the moon setting and Pomfrey’s arrival in the Shrieking Shack to attend Remus with the same kind of false sensuality and romantic perfection as the painting in the Tate museum.

Sirius knows better than anyone that Remus is no Icarus; there’s no glory in Remus’s suffering, no higher purpose or meaning that can be ascribed to his affliction and yet the vision of Remus’s wiry body, supine and bruised like a peach, cock draped elegantly on a thigh, recalls another-worldly beauty, a mythic being from a bygone era.

Remus shifts beneath his touch and Sirius, drawn back into the present moment, gently moves his hand from Remus’s thigh to his knee only to retrace the path. Sirius considers all of the ways he’s touched Remus before – like a caregiver and a confidante when discreetly preparing Remus for Pomfrey’s arrival. He’s cleaned the gravest of wounds without giving evidence of an intervening force. But mostly, he’s touched Remus like a friend – careless tussles done in jest; a firm handshake to inaugurate a pickup game of quidditch; two arms linked together to better secure cover under an invisibility cloak.

“It’s different in the shack,” Remus supplies, as if he’s finally cottoned on to Sirius’s train of thought. “I never wanted you or the others to see me like that.”

“What, naked?” Sirius jokes.

“Yes.”

Sirius cocks an eyebrow. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“It’s not just that.”

“What then?”

“The scars, I mean. It’s not just my body that I’m talking about.” Remus tenses under Sirius’s touch and bites at his lower lip, displaying a familiar reticence that’s been somewhat dulled until now from the weed. “It’s more than that. Having you watch over me after the full — taking care of me, months on end and year after year. It’s a lot to ask from your family, let alone your friends. It’s too much, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never felt that way about you, or James and Peter for that matter. I can take all of you, however you are. It’s not a question for me.”

A flicker of surprise — or is it distress — traverses the plains Remus’s face. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m not so keen to see them naked, mind you.”

“I’ve seen Prong’s arse more times than I can count over the last seven years. I’m surprised we haven’t swapped names or at the very least, dubbed him Moony Junior—”

“Can I kiss you?” Sirius blurts out, his grip on Remus’s thigh tightening.

Remus jolts upward, fitfully coughing, the question having seemingly caught him by surprise and upended his dissemble of calm disinterest.

Ying and Yang, Peter liked to say offhand about Remus’s character. Or behind his back, Jekyll and Hyde. “It’s uncanny how good he is at lying,” Peter would remark, after Remus had once again concocted a story on the fly, cunningly excusing a late-night excursion to the kitchens or a prank gone wrong when caught after hours in the castle corridors by a professor.

But what Peter perceives as a flaw in Remus, a disturbing inconsistency in personality, Sirius has always found intriguing. He suspects that beneath it all Remus is a mess of confusion and desire just like any other eighteen-year-old. A kiss, Sirius thinks, might be the start towards knowing for sure.

Clearing his throat, Remus brushes his nose and shrugs. A towering pause and then, “Alright, I suppose.”

“Merlin, you’re withholding, making a man work for it. I shouldn’t be surprised with the way you hoard chocolate.”

Sirius rises to his knees, angling his torso so that’s he perched directly across from Remus, who observes the translation of movement with quiet curiosity. Tilting forward, Sirius presses their lips together in a chaste kiss.

Remus’s lips are warm and dry from the smoke and taste like weed and stale butterbeer. Sirius kisses the border of Remus’s mouth and traces his fingers along the curve of his jaw before clasping the nape of Remus’s neck to draw him closer. Remus bows forward like a branch in the wind and securely grasps Sirius’s arm as if to steady himself.

The kiss deepens when Sirius’s hand edges downward, fanned fingers dancing along the slope of Remus’s back before rushing to untuck Remus’s shirt from his trousers. Remus emits a startled gasp as Sirius firmly explores the ladder of his spine, caressing each delicate bone without detaching his lips.

Sirius shakily exhales, overwhelmed and a little bit lost now that’s he’s been granted access to touch and kiss the one person who’s been off-limits for so long.

Sirius deepens the kiss, licking into Remus’s mouth before daringly running a hand across Remus’s chest and tracing a scar that bisects a peaked nipple. Remus shivers at the brush of fingers, his mouth pliant as Sirius settles his hands on the pulse point of Remus’s neck — the thrum of blood circulating beneath the warm surface serving as a loving reminder of the sheer being-ness of Remus, the remarkable fact of his existence.

“Have you done this before?” Remus asks, panting ever so slightly as if to catch his breath.

Sirius groans, pressing his face into the crook of Remus’s neck, not entirely thrilled to rehash any of his past dalliances. “Yes, a few times now. But never with…”

He pauses, unsure how to explain that he’s only been with girls.

Remus nods, as if confirming some abstract knowledge.

“Have you ever—” Sirius hesitates.

“Can we—” Remus interrupts.

“Fuck, yes, come here.” Sirius hurriedly moves into Remus’s orbit with re-focused purpose before fitfully pulling away again.

Remus looks up sharply, his kiss swollen lips pitched in a familiar frown.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Sirius emits a frenzied laugh. “Fuck, I think I’ve gone round the bend — I don’t know what’s up or down anymore. I’ve never wanted anyone like this before. I just need to know, are you alright?”

Worried he’s somehow offended him when there’s no forthcoming response, Sirius follows the line of Remus’s thighs to rest his hands on the firm, satisfying swell of Remus’s arse. “Er— I mean, is this alright?” 

Remus glances away, eyes shifting momentarily to the doorway.

“Never known you to ask for permission before.”

Sirius scoffs and starts, “Moony—”

“Yes, Sirius… It’s bloody brilliant, alright?” Remus sounds almost annoyed at the revelation. “But I’ve got to tell you something. I’m not going to move in with you.”

“What? No, no that’s just like you—”

Before Sirius can advance an argument against his friend’s well-worn retractions and insecurities, he’s muted by the determined collision of Remus’s mouth and the scramble of limbs as Remus almost launches himself into Sirius’s seated lap.

Sirius’s startled laugh quickly morphs into a low moan as Remus tongues along Sirius’s neck while purposefully working to unlatch the button of Sirius’s jeans. Stomach clenching in anticipation, Sirius gropes at Remus’s arse, desperate to narrow the space between their bodies and enable Remus to settle astride his hips that can’t seem to still. Sirius inelegantly bucks upwards as Remus manages to cross the threshold of the holy zipper, his warm enclosing hand remarkably confident in its ministrations.

Over the course of their friendship, Sirius has come to know Remus’s physicality, its gifts and limitations, but marvels now that this is perhaps a shared literacy. Has Remus been watching him in turn?

“You feel so good,” Sirius breathes. “I didn’t know it could feel like this.”

The kiss that follows is an excavation of desire, the languid slide of tongues working to extract more ungodly sounds from Remus as Sirius securely envelops him in his arms.

Remus smiles against his lips as the kiss becomes increasingly frantic, the cadence of movement losing its rhythm. Sirius’s grip on Remus’s backside tightens, his right hand alternating between squeezing his bum and dragging his fingers along the seam of his trousers, demarcating the crack of Remus’s arse. A sudden shift in position elicits an intoxicating frisson of excitement, the friction of Remus squirming in his lap coupled with the persistent, loose grip of Remus’s hand almost too much to handle.

Remus’s breath quickens as Sirius carefully lifts his shirt to caress his belly, rubbing it in almost soothing maternal motions as if he’s remedying an ill stomach. With his free hand, Sirius dextrously flicks the button of Remus’s trousers, desperate to touch him and even the playing field. Sirius struggles to part from the unyielding kiss to ask Remus’s permission once more. The brief separation results in a frustrated whimper from Remus that has Sirius groaning in return.

Before he can utter another word, Remus’s hands are curling in his hair to pull him closer.

“Please,” Remus says, voice resolute but dampened from the press of lips against Sirius’s neck. Against his ear, Remus hotly whispers, “I need you.”

Simple and true like the spell for light, Remus’s words overcome Sirius, inspiring a burst of pure happiness.

Sirius laughs at his good fortune and hastens to assess how he can give Remus everything he wants. A rush of movement follows, beginning with Sirius determinedly reaching into Remus’s trousers.

A blissful ten minutes pass – Sirius not entirely pleased with his stamina but optimistic that it can only improve with practice. After, they lie next to each other in silence, Sirius only now becoming attuned to the discomfort of the cold and uneven stone flooring.

“If I’m being honest, I could probably go again,” Sirius admits with a grin, blindly reaching for Remus’s hand.

Remus sits up but doesn’t withdraw his hand. He looks down at Sirius. An undercurrent of desire, and perhaps, disbelief at what just transpired persists in their shared gaze.

“Christ, this is strange. I think I might be in shock.” Remus forces a laugh.

Sirius narrows his gaze in consideration. Sitting up, he releases Remus’s hand to quickly vanish the wetness on his stomach and fasten his jeans. Searching for words, Sirius inches closer to Remus and turning more fully, he runs a hand across Remus’s brow, arresting the impulse to kiss him again.

“I suppose I’m feeling a bit unsettled by all of this. Or perhaps, surprised is a better term? I didn’t know you wanted this,” Remus inserts into the quiet of the room.

“It’s been a while now, if I’m being honest,” Sirius counters, trying to tamp down his brewing irritation at Remus’s predictable response to something entirely unpredictable.

“What do you want?”

The ‘from me’ is suppressed but Sirius hears it so acutely it’s as if Remus is screaming it out loud. The thing is, detaching yourself from others gets increasingly difficult the moment you start snogging your friends.

Sirius wants to ask, Are we better now? He wants to demand that Remus move in with him. No man’s an island, but in practice, how do you ensure this? A binding spell?

I want to take care of you, Sirius thinks, but hoping to spark a laugh and pierce the rising austerity, he pounces on Remus, yelping, “I want to lick your nipples and suck your toes!”

“Argh! Padfoot! Fuck off,” Remus groans, pressing his palm into Sirius’s face. The touch gentles after the initial tussle, Remus’s hands more carefully caressing the hard line of Sirius’s jaw.

“I don’t want to waste any more time,” Sirius pleads at last, his gaze unwavering.

“We didn’t know we were wasting time.”

“I did.”

At Remus’s look of disbelief, Sirius blushes and amends, “Alright, maybe not consciously, but in the last few months I’ve had this unrelenting feeling that I’d forgotten something… almost like I’d forgotten to submit a transfiguration assignment. I suppose that lately something has felt unfinished. Who knew it would be a shag with my best friend?”

“James is your best friend.”

Sirius laughs at the familiar quip. “Right, should I call him up here, then? I wasn’t lying when I said I could go again.”

Remus snorts before pulling Sirius forward by the collar of his shirt. The kiss unfurls languorously, the press of Remus’s mouth infusing a warmth that seems to spread throughout the room. Sirius loses himself to the heady feeling of touching Remus before excitedly jolting backwards.

“You did it again!”

Remus blinks at him and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I want to talk to you about this — about us,” Sirius says, gesturing between them, “but your pretty lips are distracting me.”

“You’re mental.”

“Tell me why you refuse to move in with me. What’s the real reason and none of that rubbish about being poor.”

Remus frowns and reaches for his wand but remains seated on the floor across from Sirius.

“I applied to the MLE, for the auror program. I knew it was a longshot but both you and James were so adamant about me trying and enthused about being all together that I started to believe it might actually be possible. I suppose I started to really want it, which I know is wrong—”

“To want things? Are you having a laugh—”

“Naturally, the MLE doesn’t accept lycanthropes, as we are all well aware.”

Sirius looks at him in horror.

“How did they know — of course, the blasted registry.”

Remus nods and with a pained expression, he confesses, voice cracking ever so slightly, “I’m ashamed by how angry I feel, knowing that what awaits me is a future shrouded in secrets and lies. And if I were to live honestly and open, at best I’d be unemployed or shunned, at worst I’d be dead.”

“You’re so good, Moony,” Sirius appeals in a hushed voice, reaching forward to run his thumb under Remus’s eye and chases the motion to kiss the bruised colour.

Remus closes his eyes and leans into the touch. Sirius aimlessly presses kisses to Remus’s face, distracted and unwilling to process the mix of tenderness he feels and a persistent haze of anger now clouding his thoughts. A rare and unpleasant thought crosses his mind – how can the Black name be leveraged to rectify this wrong? Surely his family has clout with the ministry. Satisfying visions of reprisal against the MLE are put on hold as music from the common room swells, disrupting the quiet sanctuary of the room.

Remus draws back and glances at the door leading downstairs.

“I’m going to resign from the auror program tomorrow.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Remus snaps and abruptly rises. He smooths out the creases in his trousers and hastens to tuck in his shirt. “It doesn’t matter anyways. I’ve got something else lined up. Dumbledore has some work for me.”

Sirius scrambles to get up, anticipating Remus’s swift exit from the room. “What kind of work?”

“He’s been a bit vague, but I expect it’s not unrelated to the recent acts of insubordination against the ministry, the increase in random attacks against muggle-borns and half-bloods, the surge of activity among _dark_ creatures…" Pausing, Remus snidely inquires, "Shall I go on?”

Sirius looks at him sharply. “That’s no career.”

“What, mercenary? Spy?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.” A lull and then, “You’re not the most careful sometimes.”

“And who do you think I learnt that from?” More soberly, Remus observes, “This isn’t about me or you. I suspect what’s coming is bigger than any of us.”

Sirius thinks about Regulus and the hushed rumours about a new mark on his arm, a blight on his skin that makes concrete the unreality of the current moment. The future that they’ve been pretending is wide open and free for the last few months seems to be increasingly narrowing like a corridor with only one exit.

“Well, you’ve already got the soldierly attitude down pat.”

In many ways, Sirius is not surprised by Remus’s abrupt adoption of this new mantle Dumbledore has carelessly bestowed on him. But in other ways, Remus’s sudden capitulation to his supposed affliction seems startling out of character. Sirius suspects, not for the first time, that there is an endless list of things you have to give up as you get older. He’s determined that his friends won’t be one of them.

“I thought Gryffindors were supposed to brave,” Remus says archly.

“Yes and also stubborn, clearly.”

With a wry smile, Sirius continues, “Wasn’t it Lennon who said there’s an alternative to violence — stay in bed and grow your hair? Let’s make a deal then. I won’t bother you about the future so much if you promise to enjoy this moment with me. I want to be with you.”

“Carpe diem? How much did you smoke? And your hair’s already plenty long — though come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a kip.”

“Moony!” Sirius clutches at Remus’s hands and looks down at him in exasperation.

“Your hair’s fetching, you know that.” Remus brushes his fingers through the dark tendrils framing Sirius’s face. He says, “Tell me what you mean exactly.”

“Just what I said. You and me, and the party downstairs… the afterglow of the moment. I want you to be happy.”

“Oh Padfoot…” Remus stills, his gaze locked on Sirius. “And the apartment?”

“Sod the apartment. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”

Remus’s mouth twitches as his hands drift downwards, caressing the planes of Sirius’s chest before encircling his waist. Sirius palms at the inviting slope of Remus’s lower back and hooks his right thumb on the frayed belt loop of Remus’s trousers.

“Do you believe me?” Sirius asks after a stretch of silence.

“Yes,” Remus affirms, his lilting voice bright and assured. “I do.”

Sirius grins and sweeps forward to kiss him once more before together rejoining the celebration downstairs with their friends. With the touch of Remus's lips, the future sweetly opens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and sticking with this story. I have so much respect for writers who are able to churn out such lengthy and impressive works. This was incredibly challenging for me to finish but I’m glad we’re here. It’s a bit of a love letter to this community of wolfstar writers. It’s nearly impossible to state how much the stories in this fandom have meant to me over the last few years. If my writing gives even a fraction of the pleasure I’ve gleaned from others, my work is done! Stay safe and happy holidays!


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